Where Islam spreads, freedom dies

THE imam, Mohamed Kassamali, listened intently as the father of a 12-year-old girl detailed how he wanted his daughter to marry to prevent her being tempted into a decadent western lifestyle.

“Under sharia [Islamic law] there is no problem,” the imam said. “It is said she should see her first sign of puberty at the house of her husband.

“The problem is that we cannot explain such things [the marriage] if the girl went tomorrow to [the authorities]. The other thing is the underage thing and if tomorrow the girl is, let’s say coerced or forced into this, and she goes and reports to the police then she will put all of us into the problems.”

Kassamali, who likes to boast that the Husaini Islamic Centre — the Peterborough mosque where he is the imam — is the “first Shi’ite mosque in the whole of Europe”, said he would want to meet the girl and her prospective husband to satisfy himself that they were both content to proceed.

He urged the father, in reality an undercover reporter, to encourage the newlyweds to “delay the togetherness” — to postpone having sex. Confronted by The Sunday Times this weekend, Kassamali maintained that he would have conducted the ceremony only if the 12-year-old had been willing to take part and he would have consulted experts on the legality of the wedding. “I said I will find out first whether it is allowed or not,” he said.

“I said if it is allowed according to the law here then I will. I said if it is by coercion it is not allowed . . . In Islamic sharia it [the marriage] is allowed.”

The revelations will reignite the debate over sharia marriages. The Home Office said this weekend that outlawing underage sharia marriages would be considered during the process of drawing up the forthcoming forced marriage bill.

Campaigners and the victims of forced marriage rejected Kassamali’s defence. “Talk of consent is nonsense,” said Diana Nammi, director of the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation, which campaigns against forced marriage. “How can a child agree to a marriage?”

Nadia, not her real name, was 13 when her parents forced her to marry her 24-year-old cousin. Now 18, she escaped after telling a teacher of her plight. “I couldn’t believe what was happening,” she said. “One minute I was at school playing with my friends and studying for my GCSEs and the next I was getting married to this horrible old man. Imams should refuse to conduct any marriages involving children.”

In June, David Cameron said a new criminal offence of forced marriage would be introduced. Jim Fitzpatrick, the Labour MP, is considering tabling an amendment to the forthcoming forced marriage legislation to help prevent underage sharia marriages.

The Forced Marriage Unit (FMU), established by the government in 2005, dealt with 1,468 cases last year, 14% of which involved children under the age of 15. The youngest person it helped was five, the oldest was 87.

Campaigners believe the current estimate of between 5,000 and 8,000 forced marriages involving Britons each year is too low. Nammi said: “Thousands of young Muslim girls risk physical, sexual and emotional abuse because of forced marriages.”

Some are concerned that the proposed law will force the problem deeper underground because victims will be fearful of relatives being convicted and imprisoned.

Among them is Sameem Ali, who was taken to Pakistan at the age of 13 and forced to marry a man in his twenties. Ali, now a Labour councillor,wrote a book about her experiences. “Nobody I know wants this legislation, nor do they want forced marriage. I think it will push the issue underground,” she said.

Anne-Marie Hutchinson, a legal expert on forced marriage, called on the authorities to prosecute parents and imams who organise weddings for children. “I would expect social services to commence immediate care proceedings against the parents as it constitutes significant emotional harm,” she said. “Further, the procurement of a minor in this way is likely to constitute an offence by all concerned including the imam and the prospective husband.”

Abdul Haque, a retired imam who worships at the Shoreditch mosque in east London, seemed untroubled by the prospect of the new law, however. After evening prayers on Wednesday he agreed to conduct the marriage of the fictitious 12-year-old girl.

“Tell people it is an engagement but it will be a marriage,” he said. “In Islam, once the girl reaches puberty the father has the right, the parents have the right, but under the laws of this country if the girl complains and says her marriage has been arranged and she wasn’t of marriageable age, then the person who performed the marriage will be jailed as well as the mother and father.”

He warned the reporter: “Nobody should know about this and the girl must not complain [to anybody]. . . If she talks in school they will take the girl, social workers will take her and afterwards you and I will be in trouble.”

Confronted by telephone on Friday, Haque hung up.

Meg Hillier, the Labour MP whose constituency includes Shoreditch, said she would be contacting the FMU to request an investigation. “Young British girls need protection from this sort of arrangement,” she said.

Like Haque, Kassamali was preoccupied by a fear of the secret marriage being discovered by the authorities.

He said: “I will try to help you out as much as [I can] . . . If at all we are, God forbid, if someone goes and complains . . . we will have covered all of the tracks. You know the media is always finding this [sharia marriages involving underage girls] so they will straight away put, ‘here is a parent living in the United Kingdom asking their daughter to get married underage’, and they will always put it as forced marriage so we need to be very careful when we talk to her and when we explain to her the situation.”

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comments:

No-one can claim that "these are young british girls"since they and thier whole "culture do not conform to any of our social mores,do not respect our laws,and seek to introduce an alien doctrine into a country that does not want it,abuses the indigenous English girls as easy meat,purely for the self gratification of perverts with a mental illness induced by a deep psychological fear of women,genuine british people do not behave in this way.

It seems that whatever crime or perversion you want to indulge, islam is there to tell you it's OK.

Want to have sex with a child: OKWant to murder a non-muslim: OKWant to steal a non-muslim 's property: OKWant to beat your wife (or wives): OKWant to marry your first cousin: OKWant to have slaves and sex slaves: OKWant to commit acts of terrorism: OK (and encouraged too)

As an atheist I never appreciated how much of our society comes from Judea-Christian values. I just thought it was 'common sense' that we don't have sex with children or marry our cousins. It's only when you see a religion like islam do the Mitzvah (old Jewish laws) start making sense. Apparently some people have to be told even the most rudimentary moral concepts.

Even then they don't listen because all us secularists, Jews and Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Shintos are just 'apes and pigs' to be ignored, and yet we allow these people to migrate to our lands and bring their corruption with them.

Putting aside what their faith allows (with consent from both sides and the legalities involved therein) how would we respond to the argument that the "age of consent" is already low. That in our schools and other places kids do get together and sometimes even become pregnant. But this is culturally driven and acceptable.

Heard about Chinese whisper? People are gullible. The person concerned, said something else. The mischief monger played the dirty i.e. reported the truth mixed with lieS to settle old score. The reporter saw the chance to spice this up. The pressure groups found their own interest in it. The politicians exploited this to force (right or wrong) their whims/laws upon the people AND YOU THE READERS REACT AS IF THE SKY HAS FALLEN.

Most of you are concentrating on very few words and making your comments. Have a read of the whole article. It also says that UK law ALLOWS for islamic marriages to happen for girls under the age of 16 provided they do not have sex until they are 16. The age of 12 is included in the category of under 16s. Secondly, if you guys cared to read the whole article, Muhammad Kassamali did say he would take consent from the girl if she herself WANTED to go ahead with it, which implies if she didnt, the marriage would not take place and finally, he also says he would REFER TO UK LAW to double check and to confirm that the marriage was possible. If daughters are being forced into the marriage it is the fathers fault, what has Muhammad Kassamali done wrong if he is clearly following the UK law

"the true values of Islam."Ah yes the true Muslim argument,pathetic,is Iran where true Islam is practiced,Saudi Arabia perhaps ?.In fact,point me to any country in the world where Islam shows its 'true' self.It is a supremacist ideology and is INTENT on taking the world backwards.The OIC are lobbying the UN(successfully) and the EU to introduce blasphemy laws in the West.Islamo-fascism just can't help yourself,driven out of deep insecurity and a mistaken belief in superiority.Islam is intent on taking the world backwards.Do the entire world a favour and have an enlightenment.If that's not possible stop leaving Muslim countries because they are so chaotic and oppressive and coming to the West only to set up the same systems that fail so miserably in their countries of origin.Ironic that Muslims say the best place to practice their beliefs is the West,what does that say about Islam and Islamic culture ?.

Its a shame to see you all talk about Muslims in such a way.Just because few ignorant people who are not Educated and know nothing about the Real religion of Islam and have taken few narrations and translated it in their own ways to suit their own desires doesn't mean you all have the right to talk about them all/include all. Its really easy for everyone to get so angry and come up with all these unfair comments but dont we all watch the TV program on Skye that's call "16 and pregnant"?? Well i do but because it not about Muslims, people take it to be normal and make it into a TV show as well.

This is really unfair and we have the right to be treated the same way you are all because we have respected the law through out our lives and our parents always encouraged us to become Educated and i was 18 when i fell in-Love with a 19 years old boy and my parents were against it because they said you are too young and he is too and both will not have a successful life and we waited till we both completed our studies and each got a good job and then we got engaged for a year and got married at age of 23.Please guys in every religion there is good people and bad as well but does that got anything to do with the actual religion??

Islam is a beautiful religion and women and men are treated equally as allah mentions them same amount of time in the quran

BUT nonetheless i respect all your opinions because you dont see that as being right but you have to always be fair when commenting and not include the religion in it because once you have studies and understood the truth Islam or any other religion, you have absolutely no right to talk about it just because of it's people.

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that Islam is beautiful???Well a death cult that encourages murder,forced marriages,female genital mutilation,consanguineous marriages(increasing the possibility of double recessive disease)and violence against people ,who hold the belief of sky fairy Allah and loyalty to Mo the illiterate ,itinerate desert psychopath ,has from a common sense perspective a beauty so esoteric ;that it must be the reasoning of those who have experienced the brain damaging inculcation of Musloid dogma.